Comedian


A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting foolish or employing prop comedy. A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called a stand-up comedian.
A popular saying, variously quoted but generally attributed to Ed Wynn, is, "A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny", which draws a distinction between how much of the comedy can be attributed to verbal content and how much to acting and persona.
Since the 1980s, a new wave of comedy, called alternative comedy, has grown in popularity with its more offbeat and experimental style. This normally involves more experiential, or observational reporting, e.g. Alexei Sayle, Daniel Tosh and Malcolm Hardee. As far as content is concerned, comedians such as Tommy Tiernan, Des Bishop, Kevin Hart and Joan Rivers draw on their background to poke fun at themselves, while others such as Jon Stewart, and Ben Elton have very strong political and cultural undertones.
Many comics achieve a cult following while touring famous comedy hubs such as the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, the Edinburgh Fringe, and Melbourne Comedy Festival in Australia. Often a comic's career advances significantly when they win a notable comedy award, such as the Edinburgh Comedy Award. Comics sometimes foray into other areas of entertainment, such as film and television, where they become more widely known; e.g., Eddie Izzard or Ricky Gervais. However, a comic's stand-up success does not guarantee a film's critical or box office success.

History

Ancient Greeks

Comedians can be dated back to 425 BC, when Aristophanes, a comic author and playwright, wrote ancient comedic plays. He wrote 40 comedies, 11 of which survive and are still being performed. Aristophanes' comedy style took the form of satyr plays.

Shakespearean comedy

The English poet and playwright William Shakespeare wrote many comedies. A Shakespearean comedy is one that has a happy ending, usually involving marriages between the unmarried characters, and a tone and style that is more light-hearted than Shakespeare's other plays.

Modern era

Modern standup comedy has its roots in the United Kingdom in 1850 music hall theatres, where Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, and Dan Leno first performed, mentored by comedian and theatre impresario Fred Karno, who developed a form of sketch comedy without dialogue in the 1890s and also pioneered slapstick comedy. American standup emerged in the corresponding vaudeville theatre from the 1880s to the 1930s, with such comics as W. C. Fields, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers.

Media

In the modern era, as technology produced forms of mass communications media, these were adapted to entertainment and comedians adapted to the new media, sometimes switching to new forms as they were introduced.

Stand-up

Stand-up comedy is a comic monologue performed standing on a stage. Bob Hope became the most popular stand-up comedian of the 20th century, in a nearly 80-year career that included numerous comedy film roles over a five-decade span, radio, television, and entertaining armed service troops through the USO. Other noted stand-up comedians include Billy Connolly, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Jerry Seinfeld, Dylan Moran, Lee Evans, Patton Oswalt and Jo Brand.

Audio recording

Some of the earliest commercial sound recordings were made by standup comedians such as Cal Stewart, who recorded collections of his humorous monologues on Edison Records as early as 1898, and other labels until his death in 1919.
Bandleader Spike Jones recorded 15 musical comedy albums satirizing popular and classical music from 1950 to his death in 1965. Tom Lehrer wrote and recorded five albums of songs satirizing political and social issues from 1953 to 1965. Musician Peter Schickele, inspired by Jones, parodied classical music with 17 albums of his music which he presented as written by "P.D.Q. Bach" from 1965 through 2007.
In 1968, radio surreal comedy group The Firesign Theatre revolutionized the concept of the spoken comedy album by writing and recording elaborate radio plays employing sound effects and multitrack recording, which comedian Robin Williams called "the audio equivalent of a Hieronymous Bosch painting." Comedy duo Cheech and Chong recorded comedy albums in similar format from 1971 through 1985.

Film

Karno took Chaplin and Laurel on two trips to the United States to tour the vaudeville circuit. On the second one, they were recruited by the fledgling silent film industry. Chaplin became the most popular screen comedian of the first half of the 20th century. Chaplin and Stan Laurel were protégés of Fred Karno, the English theatre impresario of British music hall, and in his biography Laurel stated, "Fred Karno didn't teach Charlie and me all we know about comedy. He just taught us most of it". Chaplin wrote films such as Modern Times and The Kid. His films still have a major impact on comedy in films today.
Laurel met Oliver Hardy in the US and teamed up as Laurel and Hardy. Keaton also started making silent comedies.
Fields appeared in Broadway musical comedies, three silent films in 1915 and 1925, and in sound films starting in 1926. The Marx brothers also made the transition to film in 1929, by way of two Broadway musicals.
Many other comedians made sound films, such as Bob Hope, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, and Jerry Lewis.
Some comedians who entered film expanded their acting skills to become dramatic actors, or started as actors specializing in comic roles, such as Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lynde, Michael Keaton, and Robin Williams.

Radio

In the United Kingdom, radio has been a proving-ground for many comedians. Ricky Gervais began his career at a London radio station called XFM and Chris Morris began his career at Radio Cambridgeshire. The League of Gentlemen, Mitchell and Webb and The Mighty Boosh all transferred to television after broadcasting on BBC Radio 4. Between 2002 and 2011 BBC Radio 6 Music used to feature regular shows presented by comedians including Phill Jupitus, Stephen Merchant and Adam and Joe. Now BBC radio comedy is mainly available on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Before television, radio was one of the main ways to enjoy comedy. The most popular early shows in the United Kingdom include the Goon Show and Hancock's Half Hour.

Television

On television there are comedy talk shows where comedians make fun of current news or popular topics. Such comedians include Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Graham Norton, Jim Jefferies, James Corden, John Oliver, Jonathan Ross, David Letterman, and Chelsea Handler. There are sketch comedies, such as Mr. Show with Bob and David and Monty Python who created their sketch comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus, and sitcoms, such as Roseanne, Only Fools and Horses, and Not Going Out, as well as popular panel shows like The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, Have I Got News for You, and Celebrity Juice.

Internet

Comedy is increasingly enjoyed online. Comedians with popular long-running podcasts series include Kevin Smith, or Richard Herring. Comedians streaming videos of their stand-up include Bridget Christie, Louis C.K. and Daniel Kitson. Many comedians publicize their work and build an audience through social media. An example of a comedian that gained their following through the internet is Bo Burnham. These comedians can be found on YouTube and especially Twitter.

Jokes

There are many established formats for jokes. One example is the pun or double-entendre, where similar words are interchanged. The Two Ronnies often used puns and double-entendre. Stewart Francis and Tim Vine are examples of current comedians who deploy numerous puns. Jokes based on puns tend to be very quick and easy to digest, which sometimes leads to other joke forms being overlooked, for example in the Funniest Joke of the Fringe awards. Other jokes may rely on confounding an audience's expectations through a misleading setup. Ed Byrne is an example of a comedian who has used this technique. Some jokes are based on ad absurdum extrapolations, for example much of Richard Herring and Ross Noble's standup.. In ironic humour there is an intentional mismatch between a message and the form in which it is conveyed. Other joke forms include observation, whimsy, self-deprecation and parody.

Personality traits

In a January 2014 study, conducted in the British Journal of Psychiatry, scientists found that comedians tend to have high levels of psychotic personality traits. In the study, researchers analyzed 404 male and 119 female comedians from Australia, Britain, and the United States. The participants were asked to complete an online questionnaire designed to measure psychotic traits in healthy people. They found that comedians scored "significantly higher on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of people who had non-creative jobs." Gordon Claridge, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford and leader of the study claimed, "the creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis—both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder." However, labeling comedians' personality traits as "psychotic" does not mean that individual is a psychopath, since psychopathy is distinct from psychosis, and neither does it mean their behavior is necessarily pathological.

Highest-paid comedians

Forbes publishes an annual list of the most financially successful comedians in the world, similarly to their Celebrity 100 list. Their data sources include Nielsen Media Research, Pollstar, Box Office Mojo and IMDb. The list was topped by Jerry Seinfeld from 2006 until 2015, who lost the title to Kevin Hart in 2016. In that year, the eight highest paid comedians were from the United States, including Amy Schumer, who became the first woman to be listed in the top ten. The top ten of 2016 are as follows:
RankNameAnnual earnings NationalityAgeNotable works
1Kevin Hart$87.5 millionUnited States38', Ride Along, The Secret Life of Pets
2Jerry Seinfeld$43.5 millionUnited States63Seinfeld, The Marriage Ref, I'm Telling You for the Last Time
3Terry Fator$21 millionUnited States52America's Got Talent
4Amy Schumer$17 millionUnited States36Trainwreck, Inside Amy Schumer, 2015 MTV Movie Awards
5Jeff Dunham$13.5 millionUnited States55', ', Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special
6Dave Chappelle$13 millionUnited States44Dave Chappelle's Block Party, Half Baked, Chappelle's Show
7Jim Gaffigan$12.5 millionUnited States51', The Jim Gaffigan Show, It's Kind of a Funny Story
8Gabriel Iglesias$9.5 millionUnited States41Hot and Fluffy, The Fluffy Movie, Gabriel Iglesias Presents Stand Up Revolution
9Russell Peters$9 millionCanada47Red, White and Brown, Outsourced, Breakaway
10John Bishop$7 millionUnited Kingdom51John Bishop's Britain, The John Bishop Show, Panto!